Jeff Zilm’s next six paintings are sold, even though they’ve yet to be painted. During Dallas Arts Week, The Journal Gallery’s Michael Nevin and
Julia Dippelhofer snatched up all he had available on a visit to the artist’s studio. “Being in that strange part of town, knowing that Jeff wasn’t showing
much at the moment, we really had that sense of discovery, which is rare. We visit a lot of studios and 99 percent of the time there is nothing that
surprising or exceptional. This was different, you could tell that he needs to make the work, that there is no back up plan. Jeff’s work, in many ways,
speaks of the world today and this time in which old technologies, and ways of communicating are either being preserved, archived or destroyed,”
remarks Nevin who has a show planned for Zilm in September.

“Things have been cooking with The Journal for a while,” Zilm tells us. Cindy Schwartz is not surprised. “Jeff Zilm has been a part of thecontemporary dialogue for some time. He was recognized for this by the smartest art cognoscenti back in 2008 when he was chosen to do a residencyin Marfa at the Chinati Foundation. He maintains a practice of creating paintings from raw materials on canvas from deteriorated film emulsion thatsets up a tension for the viewer. It creates this slow reveal that is at once beautiful and intriguing, a result that so many artists working with materialityare striving to achieve.” Excited? Yes, he is. “This is my ticket to hang out with people that I like and do some shows.”—P“This past fall, I visited the survey of Julian Schnabel’s paintings at the BrantFoundation and the installation at Dallas Contemporary of new paintings isequally impressive. The aspect of Schnabel that`s so great is that, as an artist,he is very confident that his current subjective position will turn out to be ourobjective future, and I embrace that.” —Chris Byrne, co-founder of the Dallas ArtFair, artist and board member of Dallas Contemporary